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I've been thinking about how I might do a wedge block (really, haven't we all thought about that at some point or another?) over the past couple of days, and I thought I'd like to do a mechanic for each wedge ... so, without further ado, here's what I've come up with! I only have very lose flavor-stuff in mind right now (the GWB wedge is all about the cycle of life and death, the GUB wedge is about a hive-mind like organism, the WRU wedge is about a zealous, patriotic, techno-American society, etc)

Rebirth {cost} (, sacrifice a creature: Return this card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Rebirth only as a sorcery.)

The first keyword I designed (mostly because I really love and feel it's criminally underexplored). I think I went through about ten versions of this ability before I settled on something I was happy with. As a note: the wedge will have a lot of ETB and haste creatures.

Dreamfuel (As you cast this spell, you may return a creature you control to its owner's hand. If you do, copy this spell. You may choose new targets for the copy.)

That "colonize" keyword seems to be red-green, and maybe red-green-white if you remove haste. That "Gravemind" keyword sounds incredibly dangerous, there's a reason (that I don't know!) why they never printed cards that can borrow non-activated abilities of creatures in graveyards.

That "colonize" keyword seems to be red-green, and maybe red-green-white if you remove haste. That "Gravemind" keyword sounds incredibly dangerous, there's a reason (that I don't know!) why they never printed cards that can borrow non-activated abilities of creatures in graveyards.

I'm aware that putting tokens onto the field (especially small tokens) is usually green's shtick, but the idea here is that they're assembling artifacts (which green hates, blue loves, and white is a fan of particularly since these ones are creatures).

Gravemind is the one that seems most likely to have the potential to be busted, I'll admit. I'm keeping an eye on it at the very least.

Yeah, and that's definitely mono-white, especially because the color blue only cares about few high-quality creatures instead of many low-quality creatures..

The idea is that blue's excited over the artifact part of it (which was actually the flavor I tried to capture with Devout Artificier. Perhaps I failed :P)

The idea for the RWU Wedge (which, next to BUG, was the hardest to come up with) is that it's all about zealotry, about belief in a progressive, free system and proselytzing on behalf of said system (yes, very much like America; I couldn't resist). Blue's piece of the Colonize keyword will come in most in what it can do with the abundance of Artifacts you get out (which blue does like to do, or at least likes to some time: Sharding Sphinx, Grand Architect which relies on multiple artifacts, Master of Etherium)

Okay, I read "citizen" as creature type and then didn't pay enough attention to the type-line anymore..

Yep! My first idea was that Colonize (then called "Infrastructure") would put dud artifacts onto the battlefield; not liking that it was basically a "Count these and do this" mechanic, I changed it to memnites, which felt too powerful and not particularly red. It was a friend of mine who had the brainwave of making them hasty 0/1s, which I thought was more or less perfect!

Outcry | InstantTarget attacking creature you control gets +3/+0 until end of turn.

or a RWU card like this:

Master of Ceremonies | Creature - Human Artificer (R)Colonize, Sacrifice an artifact creature you control: Each creature you control gets +1/+1 until end of turn."Behold the power of our Great Nation! Behold the power of belief!"3/2

or a blue sorcery like this:

CARDNAME | SorceryCitizens you control get ": Draw a card." until end of turn.

These are all kind of off the top of my head, but that's the sort of thing I want to do with Colonize.

(Not to mention, it synergizes nicely with its most similar wedge, Warcast)

Okay, but why does that encourage you to put non-blue / non-white abilities like haste on the creature tokens? Does the white-blue-red wedge really need surprise attackers that rather belong into a red-green-black shard?

Okay, but why does that encourage you to put non-blue / non-white abilities like haste on the creature tokens? Does the white-blue-red wedge really need surprise attackers that rather belong into a red-green-black shard?

I think it's a little more in that these "surprise attackers" can't surprise anyone without a little fine-tuning; also, while "haste" is non-white and non-blue, it has made its way onto some artifacts.

That "colonize" keyword would be perfect for a white-blue-red wedge if there wasn't haste, but maybe that's just me! Your other keywords have a lot more respect for the modern color pie, I wouldn't complain about them..

That "colonize" keyword would be perfect for a white-blue-red wedge if there wasn't haste, but maybe that's just me! Your other keywords have a lot more respect for the modern color pie, I wouldn't complain about them..

Hrm. You know, I can definitely see where you're coming from.

I'll ask you and everyone else: what would you think of Colonize if it made 1/1 Citizen artifact creature tokens (for )?

Rebirth is very good for the 3 best creature recursion colors, Dreamfuel is interesting, and Warcast seems appropriate as well.

Gravemind just seems horribly bad because, unlike the others in this list, the power of the mechanic is highly variable based upon othe cards in the deck. The power of Rebirth, Dreamfuel and Warcast is entirely dependent upon the card they are printed on.

I'd replace Colonize with something along the lines of:

Interchange (During your upkeep you may pay , if you do you choose an opponent, then exchange control of a permanent you control with converted mana cost of X with a permanent of converted mana cost of X that opponent controls of the opponent's choice.)

I think this captures reasonably well. Red and blue both deal with control changes and exchanges, and it is coupled with white's ideal of fairness and equality.

You could use these creature tokens that Puppet Conjurer produces, there's no reason to increase the power because that forces you to heavily increase the mana costs of the cards that can produce them..

Again, my rules knowledge sucks, but I suspect the problem isn't the rules being able to handle it, it's that players would have no idea how to handle the situations such a card would create without deeper rules knowledge than the average casual player can boast.

By the way, putting that "gravemind" ability on the stack multiple times allows every creature that has that mechanic to execute some of the game-warping combos that Necrotic Ooze could execute, tight?

Warcast is fine. Encourages overextension, but that's not too important.Rebirth is okay. While the mechanic itself is sound, it can lead to highly consistent and repetive games if there's a good enough card out there. Especially dangerous on limited bombs.Colonize isn't all that hot for me. I think you might end up with a bunch of cards that are only useful with a bunch of other cards, and they are all somewhat useless on their own. There's only so much you can do with it on common, since it by itself creates a lot of chump blockers, stalling limited games.I'm not sure what to think of dreamcast. I don't like the name, but other than that I don't know. Feels a lot like conspire.Gravemind has aforementioned issues.

For a specific issue with Gravemind, instead of these nebulous possibilities: Wormfang Manta. Combined with any Gravemind card, that's free turns. Lots of them. To fix it, you could make it into the Necrotic Ooze mechanic. Which ever way you go with it, it needs to feel more green, and green's main graveyard interaction is stuff like Eternal Witness, so the whole mechanic may need to change. One idea for a mechanic that I've had which would fit in Black, Blue and Green is this: "At the beginning of your upkeep, if ~ is in your graveyard, you may exile another card from your graveyard. If you do, return ~ to your hand and skip your draw step." It's a mix between Genesis, Ichorid, and Dredge, basically.

Æther RiderCreatuere - Spirit (U)
Vanishing 0 (This permanent enters the battlefield with zero time counters on it. At the beginning of your upkeep, remove a time counter from it. When the last is removed, sacrifice it.)
Flying
: Put a time counter on ~. Any player may activate this ability.
It comes on the wind, from realms unknown.
2/2
Kaldurian BehemothCreature - Beast (R)
Mana produced by lands may not be used to pay ~'s mana cost.
Trample
On Kalduria, the beasts are too good to eat common grass.
10/10
Demonic ArbitratorSorcery
Starting with you, each player may pay any amount of life. If any player paid life, repeat this process.
If a player paid more life in total than any other, that player searches his or her library for a card and puts that card into his or her hand. Then that player shuffles his or her library.
"Your sacrifice has been judged worthy. What power do you require?"

The mechanics with the two biggest problems seem to be Colonize and Gravemind.

Part of the problem with colonize is: seriously, look at what has in common and get back to me (the answer is: not a lot). I went with making an army of artifact creatures because honestly it was the only thing that felt like it could remotely fit that wedge. I do think that an individual Colonize card could be more useful than you think: the ability to consistently produce artifact tokens for a small cost isn't negligible by itself. Not giving them power, though, prevents said single Colonize card from copmletely dominating a given match. I'm relatively happy with Colonize.

Gravemind, meanwhile, might be too swingy. How would you guys feel about:

Gravemind (When this creature enters the battlefield, exile a creature from your graveyard. This creature has all activated abilities of the exiled card.)

Or

Gravemind {cost} (: This creature loses this ability and gains all activated abilities of target creature in a graveyard as long as that card is in a graveyard. Activate this ability only as a sorcery.)

I'm not 100% sure a cost is needed on it, but I figure both versions are worth looking at.

Some abilities that are red-blue-white are creatures with flying, changing targets of offensive spells + abilities, gaining control of cards that did something this turn..

None of which is particularly ripe grounds for a mechanic, I'm afraid (I most thought of gaining control of cards, but that effect is really too "big" to put on a mechanic). Also, I wanted to avoid changing targets of spells/abilities because that's very close to copying, whcih I've put more in .

Seriously. You look up the existing cards in Magic and I think there's like, four, and one is Lightning Angel, another is that dragon that destroys lands, and the only other noteworthy one is Zedruu the Greathearted

I think an important question is: Do you need a mechanic for it? I like theScion's take on it, which used the Ally tribe, although I wasn't too happy about the saboteur mechanic he went for.Auras should have something that RUW could care about.

I really don't think copying abilities is something that you want in abundance.

I think that blue-white-green should be the shard that cares about enchantment.. Anything that hampers or redirects or complicates something that would harm you and your creatures sounds red-blue-white..

Hunting Eagleflying, first strike target creature gains first stike until end of turn Hunting Eagle does 1 point of damage to target creature~"An Eagles can spot a fish in water from hundreds of feet above"(1/2)

Seriously. You look up the existing cards in Magic and I think there's like, four, and one is Lightning Angel, another is that dragon that destroys lands, and the only other noteworthy one is Zedruu the Greathearted

Numot, the Devastator, thank you very much. I use him in EDH. That deck draws fire like no one's business. Partly because I run strong defense and mass land nukes. Numot's job is to slam the weakest enemy and nuke the lands of the biggest threat.